Midnight at the Oasis Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Dialoguing...an e-mail about my last post. Steyn is disingenuous, Hitch has his problems; I can't judge either because I haven't seen the movie. He also makes the good point that the argument there is a straw man for precisely that reason. Fair enough. You writes your blogs, you takes your chances.

But in the course of that, my correspondent makes an argument about the war in general that I can respond to with confidence.

One of the main thrusts of the movie is that Moore understands the point of Iraq: there's a lot of money in it. One of the others is that by waging a war that has no forseeable end, our populace will be willing to
fall for any old hooey peddled by a preening opportunist burlesque act. And while Bush is indeed portrayed in a burlesque light, Moore also makes clear that Bush has played the country like a master...and Dems did nothing to stop him.

To be honest, I'm not sure if the writer is agreeing with Moore or just describing the movie. In either case, I have a great deal of respect for his (the writer's) intelligence and taste, and I think his points deserve a careful answer. If he's just describing the movie, take it for what it's worth--a secondhand critique and general statement of principle. If it's the writer's position, I'm not trying to attack him personally. I'm trying to do his observation justice by responding to it as fully and thoughtfully as I can after waking up 5 a.m. and already thinking about lunch. If anything, I'd like to creak him a few inches closer to my side of the fence, and pissing him off isn't the best way to do it. So apologies in advance for any tonal offensiveness.

In general, I find the kind of argument made above almost unanswerable--again, whether it's a description of Moore's stance or the writer's. When you break it down, it assumes the worst about people on our side (I refuse to put that in scare quotes) and takes nothing they say at face value--in fact, it assumes most everything they say is a lie, unless they're stupid enough to blurt out the truth. And it completely ignores the very real actions, and very public statements, of our enemies.

One of the main thrusts of the movie is that Moore understands the point of Iraq: there's a lot of money in it.

I just don't see where the money is. Are we talking about oil fields? They're now under the control of the Iraqi people, emphatically NOT the U.S., and they're not being looted by Saddam. And, for that matter, they're not being exploited as part of a massive multibillion-dollar oil-for-fraud ring under U.N. auspices. If we had been after oil, it would have been cheaper simply to buy it from Saddam rather than stick to an embargo for a decade or plunk down $88 billion on fighting a war and rebuilding a country.

If you mean "Halliburton": I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but that's gnostic fantasy-land--something for True Believers, like stories about Bill Clinton smuggling cocaine as governor of Arkansas. I'm not saying Bush and his cronies belong on Mount Rushmore, or are paragons of ethics, but you've got to at least nod at the following:

--Saddam Hussein had shown his aggressive tendencies. He had invaded his neighbors. He had used powerful chemical weapons against his own people. He had shown he had nuclear ambitions (which the Israelis nipped in the bud, once). And he had shown he was a world-class son of a bitch (jails for children, rape gangs, political prisoners' limbs cut off, fed into shredders, etc.)
--For the entire decade of the 1990s, the whole world, including Bill Clinton and vice-mountain-man Al Gore, accepted this picture of Saddam. (Or maybe Bill wanted to use Baghdad as a staging area for his coke deals?) Everyone agreed Iraq was a mess and Saddam was bonkers; it was just a question of what to do about him. Embargo? Blockade? Attack? Inspectors? What?
--Then comes 9/11. Remember the thumbnail of what came before, and what we faced. We already knew what a bunch of fundamentalist cave-men could do with sufficient secrecy and organization. What could an entire state do--a state that had shown hostility toward the U.S. and that was generally accepted to have large-scale chemical weapons? Bush's political enemies are blasting him for not doing enough before 9/11; how can you take that line and blast him for doing too much after?
--Bush chose to attack. You may not agree with his reasoning or his tactics. You may think, as the paleos and far left do, that his Wilsonian ambitions for the region are imperialistic and/or misguided. But coming up with a gnostic fantasy about the whole thing being motivated by a government contractor is unproductive.

One of the others is that by waging a war that has no forseeable end, our populace will be willing to fall for any old hooey peddled by a preening opportunist burlesque act. [the last phrase a reference to Steyn's review]

No foreseeable end: What about the handover of power to the Iraqis yesterday? And their first free election, due in January? True, we will have a presence there for some time. But we were in Japan and Germany for years after the close of hostilities (still are, in fact!) before independent governments were installed. Was that all a scheme to bulk up Truman's haberdashery sales? Can we maybe give the government the benefit of some doubt here?

Populace...willing to fall for any old hooey: This line of argument reminds me of Billy Bragg, who as a socialist made a point of writing songs for and about "the people." Then, in the liner notes to a tribute to Woody Guthrie, he referred contemptuously to "the masses" who wanted happy songs during the Depression instead of the Woodman's pinko dirges. The trouble is, the "people" and the "masses" are usually one and the same. If you agitate on behalf of the former, as Moore does, it's unseemly to call them the latter when they don't do what you want. (Such as fall for Moore's sophisticated hooey instead of the "any, old" variety.)

Moore also makes clear that Bush has played the country like a master...and Dems did nothing to stop him.

I guess that accounts for Bush's staggering approval ratings and all those glowing reports in the major media. And his rampant success at getting his judicial choices confirmed and legislation passed; not to mention hushing up all those official inquiries into his actions and all those public statements opposing him. (Such as a certain Palme d'Or winner.)

Anyhow, enough of my bicentennial minute. I should be writing about laser guns, dammit!

@ 7:27:00 AM,

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